A more interesting question would be, what if the USA was founded (populated) by the Spanish or Portugese rather than the British? Compare the difference between the north and south. The Spanish and Portugese were content to plunder the resources to send back home – the silver and gold. The British influenced system has always seemed to be more productive – ex-British colonial areas have a tendency to be more productive than areas under sway of the other colonial empires.

To go back, "To take this query further, to the edge of PC, are the peoples of the African continent or of the Middle East and their cultures and religions of the same order as the West’s?"

The blessing and curse of the Middle East has been and will remain oil. Before the need of large quantities of oil, the Middle East remain an essentially tribal area – only trusting in close relations. Only great leaders have managed to exert any kind of influence that united them. Were it not for oil, they would remain largely backwood and a danger only to themselves. Oil changed that. Whereas the majority are still grounded in tribalism, the minority in charge have exploited the massive wealth of oil to transform the physical nature of the Middle East. You can get all the modern wonders you find in the West. The big difference is that they jumped (for want of a better word) past the middle stages that Western Europe went through to get there. Extreme culture shock and a resulting retreat to the past…

“Is democracy the answer to Islam?” I’m not sure whether I agree or disagree with you. It depends on how you look at certain key issues.

Lenin “bypassed” the stages of capitalist development to impose Marxism on a largely agrarian society, and the experiment failed. It failed for two reasons though. First, it violated the theory that the proletariat must lead the way; therefore the cultural/social/political/economic conditions were not “right,” and the groundwork for a self-perpetuating “success” was not properly laid. And, it failed because Marxism/communism is inherently flawed, and therefore was doomed to failure through its own inconsistencies. Even if the proper foundation was laid, the communist system would eventually collapse.

I cite it only because there are certain surface similarities with Iraq and the Middle East as a whole. In one sense we are attempting to “impose” a cultural/political system on the Middle East (i.e. Western-style democracy) without laying the proper groundwork (i.e. helping educate people and change the culture over time to understand, accept, and embrace these principles). And, like Lenin, we are doing this out of expediency. The liberal press would never allow the US to establish an authoritarian rule that gradually, over decades, gives way to a genuine democracy as the people are educated and prepared for it. So in this sense the Leninist example applies.

But unlike communism, democracy is not inherently flawed. Given the right conditions, democracy could take hold and prosper in the Middle East. Expediency has forced the US government to impose democracy after removing Saddam. If we walk away now — literally or metaphorically — the experiment will fail. But if we continue to work with the country to educate its people about what democracy is, and isn’t, and help suppress anti-democratic forces (including religious fanatics), within a generation or two it could take hold strong enough to survive on its own.

So if we look at a 50 year timetable, I can see the strong possibility of success. If we focus on the next few years or decade only, it’s a failure.

Circumstances, rather than a carefully pre-conceived plan, created the “opportunity” today to infuse democracy in the Middle East. Either way, it’s there now, and that’s the new reality. But like a new plant this fledgling democracy must be nurtured. And part of this nurturing requires an aggressive effort to stop those forces inside and outside Iraq who wish to put an end to Iraqi democracy as it exists today, or simply bring misery to the West in general.

So it all comes down to how aggressive the West will continue to be in fighting Islamo fascism. We’ll do it primarily to protect ourselves, but if we keep one eye on the fledgling Arab democracy we kick-started in Iraq, we can accomplish both objectives — though not for another 50 years or so.

50 years is an eternity to the Western mind. But we’re talking about a complete culture shift, which means a generation or two of education and change. I reject the notion by some (not you) that Arabs are not capable of embracing democracy. Russia today shows us what is possible, and what isn’t, in this regard. They have the trappings of a real democracy without a lot of its important substance.

But some of it is there, and growing however slowly. As the Middle East develops a real middle class, which is one of the byproducts of capitalist democracy, those salutary “democratic” forces will be put in motion, and the culture will begin to change.